BRIGHTON, ENGLAND – Donned in an oversized hoodie, cap, and unkempt beard, Tyrone McKenna stands at the back of the Brighton Hotel conference room and looks to the front where the immaculately groomed Harlem Eubank is sitting at the top table holding court. “They think I’m past it,” McKenna says to BoxingScene, shaking his head and chuckling.

They’re not the only ones. McKenna, 35 years old and from Belfast, will be the outsider in their March 7 welterweight clash in every conceivable way: Eubank is unbeaten and McKenna is not; Eubank will be fighting in his hometown; in front of his own fans; and the television cameras will be at the Brighton Centre because Eubank’s promoter, Kalle Sauerland, has a deal with British terrestrial station Channel 5. 

This has all been designed as a vehicle for Eubank, and McKenna knows it.

“They look at me and know I’m 35,” McKenna says, still looking at Eubank. “They think they’ve seen the best of me. But look at the training I’m putting in. I’m away in Germany, seven days a week, and the camp is really bringing something new into me. The last three or four years, living and training in Ireland, it got easier and easier and easier – and I got lazier and lazier. I needed to move away and when I did that, it rolled back the years.” 

Eubank is 20-0 (8 KOs). McKenna, however, will enter the ring having lost four of his past seven bouts. It was a run of form that seemed so irreversible he even announced his retirement during the midst of it. A loss to a man he’d beaten before – Mohamed Mimoune – in August 2024 was the low point before he earned a much-needed win four months later when he stopped Dylan Moran in two rounds.

“I’ve had a few losses and they’re thinking I’m past it,” McKenna says. “The fact is I’m not. Who have I been beaten by? World-class operators – apart from maybe Mimoune, but that’s why I moved up. I feel great at this weight class; I feel strong. I feel like they’ve overlooked me a bit. Harlem has had easier fights; he’s jumping in too deep. 

“You need losses in your career. You only win and you think you’re the best thing in the world; you start believing in your own hype. Losses make you put your feet on the ground and you know what you have to put in; you know how hard you have to work; you don’t want to lose again.”

It’s not necessarily the defeats on McKenna’s 24-5-1 (17 KOs) record that haunt him the most but what followed them. “Walking into your kids and saying you’ve got beat is one of the most embarrassing things you can do,” he explains. “I don’t want to have to tell them that again, I want to make my family proud. I’m grinding every day, I don’t want to let people down, I don’t want to tell my kids I’ve lost again.” 

So why hasn’t he found that motivation before now?

“I was skiving,” he admits. “Before Lewis Crocker [l ud 12, December 2023] I hadn’t fought for 18 months, I hadn’t been paid, I couldn’t be fucked. Everything was falling through and I was like, ‘I don’t give a fuck no more’. Skiving gets you beat in fights you should be winning. I want to give 100 per cent to this career now, that’s why I’m in Germany.”

Taking himself away from his family to train is evidence of his new-found determination. McKenna may not be past it – whatever “it” might be – but he will surely pass the point of no return if he fails to upset Eubank, 32, on Friday night. He seems to know that; his repeated assurances that he’s not past it appear as much for his own ears as they are anyone else’s. 

“Some days I feel old and some days I don’t,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve changed much. From being 27, 28, I still feel the same fighter. I still feel like I’m as fast, I still feel like I’m as strong. I feel like I’m a lot smarter.”

He looks over at Eubank again, a fighter yet to go in with the kind of quality that McKenna has faced. The defeats may have started to pile up but there’s no shame in losing to Regis Prograis, Lewis Crocker, Jack Catterall and Ohara Davies.

“Eubank was never on my radar,” McKenna continues. “I didn’t even think he was in my weight class. Then my coach came in one day and said I’d love you to fight Harlem Eubank. I said, ‘Fuck, is he at my weight?’ Then I watched his last fight, realised I wanted to fight him and called him out after my last win. It was made within three days – his team wanted it, I wanted it.

“It puts a new lease of life into my career. It puts me back high up there in the world, it reignites, it puts a new spark back in, it’s exactly what I want to do.”

The reignition – the spark – is what we all need from time to time. There’s no shame in admitting we’re in rut. 

“Boxing was disheartening for a while,” McKenna agrees, “I can see that now. It was more to do with how I was feeling rather than how good I am. There were fights I should have won – though I can’t say that about [Regis] Prograis, who was absolutely fucking lethal – but the other losses shouldn’t have happened. Now I’m back to loving boxing again and it was retiring that made me realise that.”